


The Least I Can Do

by foxghost



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Angst, Friendship, M/M, Physical Abuse, Unrequited Love, kmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxghost/pseuds/foxghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this kmeme prompt:<br/>http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/8469.html?thread=30769429#t30769429</p>
<p>"Varric’s always had a thing for secondary characters. It's only grown stronger since he met a possesed Grey Warden revolutionary apostate with feathery pauldrons, who’d have made a dashing hero, hadn’t Varric met Hawke first.</p>
<p>Then Anders becomes a huge part of both Hawke’s story and life, and Varric understands perfectly well that’s just how things are, it’s the hero that gets the love of his life, while the storyteller gets, well, another story to tell. It doesn’t mean it’s any easier to watch the two of them together, though.</p>
<p>Break my sodding heart, anons. Break it, crush it, and stomp on it. I need a good bawl."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Least I Can Do

They met the first time in darktown, in that dingy clinic. It was a relatively warm day; Varric remembered that. He also remembered the slight sheen of sweat on Anders' upper lip and the way little wisps escaped from his half tied-back hair.  
  
Anders had warm, amber coloured eyes, slightly wary and a little tired.  
  
Two words from Varric and a friendly smile and the man had dropped his guard. Whatever he might have been, grey warden, apostate, possessed or otherwise, Anders was naive.  
  
A little sweet, a lot innocent and he didn't even know it, and somewhere in Varric's brain in a place that he refused to acknowledge, because it involved feelings, he added 'endearing' to the list of attributes.  
  
*  
  
Varric had a habit of saying as many words as possible in order to convey as little about himself as possible. He made it hard for anyone to know him. To know him truly, not just the verbose storyteller with his tales and the name on the covers of his books, but Varric, the one who paid the Coterie to keep them off his friends, talked Hawke down from the edge pretty much on a daily basis, and juggled his friends' relationships for them so that they didn't have to do it themselves.  
  
Varric always offered Anders a drink or three, and Anders always ended up ordering something poisonous like tea or water. The spirit that lived inside of him must have helped him neutralize cholera or something, because the healer never got sick from the stuff.  
  
The cover was always that parchment he had in front of him all the time, taking notes whenever Anders had another interesting Blight time tale to tell. Sometimes he 'accidentally' forgot to put fresh ink in his pot before Anders' little visits and they ended up drinking and laughing into the night.  
  
Varric liked those nights best; he'd order dinner, something questionable and fried from the Hanged Man's kitchen that smelled extremely heart clotting and could only be described as 'food that sticks to your ribs.' And that was alright, since Anders was looking less and less substantial these days.  
  
"Always taking care of other people," Anders commented, one day. "What will we all do without you?"  
  
"And that coming from the wanted apostate who runs a free clinic in darktown," Varric countered, one hand on a quill, another on his drink.  
  
"You know what I mean." There it was again, that slight crease in between his eyebrows, a bit of annoyance. Only Anders did that - when he deflected other people they didn't care to get the truth out of him. They were too busy with their own lives to wonder what was happening in others'.  
  
So Varric did that thing where he rolled his one shoulder while squeezing it with his hand, wincing at the pain in his knotted muscles, and Anders would leave whatever swill he happened to be drinking to rub at his shoulders, fussing and clucking like a mother hen.  
  
He wasn't the only one that enjoyed taking care of other people.  
  
*  
  
It came as no surprise, really, when Blondie confessed that he was crushing hard on their tall dark and handsome leader. Of course, in Varric's opinion, their leader was tall, dark, handsome and angry all the time, and Anders deserved better.  
  
He didn't know which words to use to describe them before everything went pear shaped, but he was stuck between star-crossed and starry-eyed. One because it was destined for tragedy, and two because Blondie obviously took 'love was blind' to the extreme.  
  
Varric just didn't expect it to hit him as hard as it did. It wasn't news, not really. From the moment those two met each other they danced around the subject of romance in between glaring at each other.  
  
Varric was fine with that. As long as they didn't talk about it, he could see their weekly, sometimes twice weekly meetings, as more than what it was. When Anders tucked a lock of his hair behind his ear to get at a stubborn knot in his neck, it felt like a caress.  
  
Denial just got a lot harder, that was all.  
  
Rubbing a soft deerskin across the stock of Bianca, he hummed a song he wrote for her, and felt a little lighter. Machines were simple. When asked why he wasn't with anyone, all these years, his answers were all the same. He wasn't into humans. Or elves. And of course, there was Bianca.  
  
It wasn't as though he could have said that there was Blondie.  
  
*  
  
Hawke had a habit of cutting things and people down to size to fit his whims, and he did the same to Anders. He didn't go out of his way to be cruel; he did so unintentionally, for the good of other people, or so Varric always thought.  
  
Since Anders moved in with Hawke, he improved in body while he slowly, inexoribly, diminished in spirit, in more ways than one. Varric was only too glad to lend an ear whenver he could spare it, which was always.  
  
There were excuses and cover stories, they were short a hand in Wicked Grace, he needed more fodder for his Red Hawk tales. It didn't matter all that much what he said, really. He'd say pretty much anything to squeeze another day of the week in the Hanged Man out of Anders.  
  
"What's Anders doing here?" Hawke asked, one day, suspicious and possessive as always, especially since Anders turned tail the moment Hawke showed up.  
  
Varric wanted to tell him that Blondie wanted to get away from the mansion sometimes, but what came out was mundane and placating. He didn't look convinced, but Varric didn't much care. They weren't friends, never would have been, but for the fact that the world revolved around Hawke and he got caught up in it some years ago and could never shake the man if he tried.  
  
*  
  
Anders disappeared for a few days after some mission Varric wasn't on, and Hawke didn't seem too concerned about finding him. It was up to Varric, eventually, to corner the mage in his own clinic, lanterns doused and doors locked, sitting on a cot with his knees drawn up to his chin.  
  
He said a quick prayer to the ancestors for his roguish upbringing before springing the lock. Then he nearly went ballistic and storm back up to hightown to shoot a bolt into Hawke's head.  
  
There, on Ander's neck, was the dark imprint of a thumb and four fingerprints. It was the kind of bruising that didn't show up for days, and Anders probably didn't even know it was there, since he'd been hiding in his clinic and there was only a tiny little mirror in the back one could hardly even shave with.  
  
"Hey, Blondie," and it was so very casual and light, and not homicidal at all.  
  
"Hi, Varric." And that was casual too, but for a hoarse voice that spoke of restless, nightmare fuelled sleep.  
  
"Do you want to talk?" Varric climbed onto a cot and sat, feet dangling, and hoped that as ridiculous he looked on the too big human furniture, it would make Blondie laugh.  
  
No such luck. Anders must have had no one to talk to for days, and the first words that came out after their short greeting was, "Varric, I'm a monster."  
  
Then he began to weep, and that was a first, even for someone as sensitive as their resident healer, and Varric almost started crying along, but he had to be the solid stone pillar like the dwarf he was, just as always.  
  
"Tell me all about it."  
  
"I almost killed a girl," it came out like a sob, and it probably was, but Varric was going to ignore that.  
  
"You've killed two-hundred and fifty-four by my last count. Plus about five hundred men, a few dozen giant spiders, and at least two demons." Varric quipped, keeping his tone light and hoping that Anders would, too.  
  
Anders' voice took on the edge of judgemental self-righteousness that could only have been you-know-who, "it's not the same."  
  
Then Varric said something soothing and placating, because he knew Anders was right, but he wasn't going to give him more reasons to hate himself.  
  
*  
  
He didn't ask about the bruise. He didn't want to hear that Anders thought he deserved it, or that it was justified in any way. It wasn't the first time Anders came to Varric wounded in some strange way that he didn't bother healing because he didn't think it was that bad.  
  
Accidents didn't look like thumb prints on the insides of one's wrists or the side of his neck or a blackeye, and when Varric pushed, Anders always assured him that Hawke apologized.  
  
They had moments that were golden, when Hawke couldn't keep his hands off his mage in public and Anders practically glowed, followed by days, or weeks, where a storm cloud hung over both of their heads and they refused to speak to one another for fear of an apocalypse.  
  
Varric was glad enough to be there for the bad days, where Anders wore his brave face with his false smile that looked horrible on him, where Varric tried to coax a real one out of him and his failures stacked up badly against the successes over the years.  
  
*  
  
Looking back, Varric had plenty of warning.  
  
He should have been tipped off by the gifting of that precious pillow of his, and maybe he should have taken it as well, since not taking it didn't change a thing.  
  
The air thick with ashes and death, in the rubble of the chantry that somehow still managed to loom over them all, Anders sat with his face in his hands and his back to all of them.  
  
Not that there was much of him left, not really, not the beautiful man he met years ago with eyes that twinkled. Justice took most of him; Hawke took the rest.  
  
And now he was ready to take what was left there too, and Varric wanted to speak up, to tell them no, don't kill him, there was too much he wanted to say over the span of years that ended up being light-hearted things he didn't really mean.  
  
"Varric." It was so quiet and choked up that he wasn't sure if he heard it right, but he hurried over anyway, stepping over the bodies of fallen templars and mages, picking through the rubble to crouch by his friend's side.  
  
"Hey, Blondie," and it took everything to not start crying, but he was solid and dwarven where his friend wasn't, so he began as he always did, with those two words that laughed all on their own.  
  
"You've been a good friend, Varric. More than I deserve." Anders said, his voice barely audible even so close, "I'm sorry I've been a disppointment. So many innocents dead ... and it's all my fault."  
  
He was tearing up again, "I'm a monster."  
  
"No. No, Blondie." He was never good at goodbyes, and he didn't want this to be one, but the powers that be were absolute and Varric wasn't a part of the story. He was only telling it. "Anders. Anders is not a monster. He's a kind, selfless man who don't ever give a flying fuck about himself, only everyone else -"  
  
It occurred to him then, why he always nicknamed everyone and kept them at a distance because real names were, well, real, and he couldn't stop his tears anymore, and he held onto Anders' hands, his tears dropping on top of them, smearing the ashes into little grey pools, "you're not a disppointment, Blondie. Don't ever think that."  
  
No. Varric himself was the disappointment. Always on the outside, looking in. If he had taken real chances and made real decisions he might have had a life with Anders instead, someone who would have supported him and loved him instead of possessing him and stripping all the things they didn't like about him away, leaving an empty shell.  
  
Hawke was approaching them, knife in his hand and pain in his eyes, and Varric put out a hand to stop him. There was one last thing he could do for Blondie. Varric pulled out a vial from his belt; quick death. He opened the seal and tucked it into Anders' hand.  
  
"It's the least I can do," he said, and he held Anders' other hand as the man drank down the potion.  
  
It was the least he could have done, since the time to do more had passed long ago.

**Author's Note:**

> There's been a bit of a kerfuffle over this on the meme faq page, when someone commented on their hatred of the rivalmance. 
> 
> The thing about the rivalmance, with Anders, is that every single time I've tried it, it feels like Hawke is intentionally making Anders feel insecure and doubt himself, and I end up feeling passive-aggressive creepy.
> 
> I mean, I've seen abusive relationships (both physical and the verbal) in other people, lucky to not have experienced one myself, and looking from the outside, it looks like one. So the tones of abuse in this fic? It's completely intentional. And the whole sitting along the sidelines going, "when the heck is s/he going to leave that crazy man?" Is probably an experience too many of us have gone through.


End file.
